Asus P6T Marvell controller

[nubro01]

I have an Asus P6T WS pro MB and I installed 2 x Fujitsu MAX3147RC.
Att startup I press CTRL-M, but no disks are found to build a RAID1 config.
I have on the Intel controller a RAID1 config with the 2 disks and when server 2008 R2 is started from that, I see the extra sas drives? What am I doing wrong.
Two Sata drives connected to the same ports are also not seen. MY guess was first that the Marvell controller needed SAS drives to be able to create a RAID1 config.

 

[440bx]

I am _almost_ sure the problem is caused by the fact that you already have a functional RAID using the ICH10R and dual RAID boot is not supported.

See various comments, including replies from ASUS here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813131357

You should make it a point to read the review titled "No SAS Boot Rom".

I believe that answers your question but, you won't like the answer.

HTH.

 

[nubro01]

The Asus P6T WS Prof latest bios 0711 contains Marvell bios 3.1.0.12.
I found an upgrade to 3.1.0.20 and that fixed all of my problems. I asume the new BIOS from Asus will contain this upgrade?
I now have a new working system with 2xSAS as RAID1 and 6xSata II 80 GIG on RAID 5.
Now I need to determine what the best value Sata drives are for a RAID.
I found up until now the Samsung HE103UJ and the WD RE3.
Any suggesstions or experience?
Regards

 

[MRFS]

WD's RE3 HDDs are superb, particularly the ones with 32MB cache
and PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording) e.g.:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=504
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=503


MRFS

 

[440bx]

I'm very pleased to hear you got the problem solved.

I would hope Asus would include the upgrade in their BIOS and, hopefully they will do so in a timely manner.

I am using the Samsungs HD103UJ which is the non-RAID version of the drive you mentioned. I have 4 of them in 2 RAID 1 sets. They've been performing without fault for almost a year. I am very pleased with their performance. That said, I know they cannot match the performance of 2 good SAS drives connected to a SAS controller particularly when I/O is heavy. You got a nice setup there.

I also have another RAID 1 set using 2 Hitachi 0A38016 1TB drives. That set is only about 2 months old, so far they have been performing well. The price of the Hitachis is incredibly low. Newegg currently has them for $75.00 and a $10 rebate, hard to resist. I actually purchased another one about a week ago because Newegg had a $10.00 off special, which means that after rebate I paid $55.00 for a 1TB hard drive. I simply could not ignore a deal like that. A good paperweight costs almost that much ;-)

I particularly like the Samsungs for their good performance and their being rather quiet for the performance they deliver but, I've heard that filing a warranty claim with Samsung is quite cumbersome. Fortunately I have not had to do so (yet?).

If you decide to get a hard drive from Newegg I suggest you torture test it thoroughly. Newegg doesn't pack hard drives very well for shipping and many don't survive the UPS trip. I usually put any hard drive through a 72 hour I/O marathon before I put it into service. One Hitachi I got from Newegg started falling apart after 40 hours of testing. Newegg was great about processing a replacement.

HTH.